Nuclear industry aims to grow despite disaster

/ AP

In this Friday, March 18, 2011 satellite image released by DigitalGlobe, the Fukushima Dai-ichi is shown. Sirens wailed Friday along a devastated coastline to mark exactly one week since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear emergency, and the government acknowledged it was slow to respond to the disasters that the prime minister called a "great test for the Japanese people." The admission came as Japan welcomed U.S. help in stabilizing its overheated, radiation-leaking Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex and raised the accident level for the crisis, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe) NO SALES

In this Friday, March 18, 2011 satellite image released by DigitalGlobe, the Fukushima Dai-ichi is shown. Sirens wailed Friday along a devastated coastline to mark exactly one week since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear emergency, and the government acknowledged it was slow to respond to the disasters that the prime minister called a "great test for the Japanese people." The admission came as Japan welcomed U.S. help in stabilizing its overheated, radiation-leaking Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex and raised the accident level for the crisis, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe) NO SALES (/ AP)

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A slow revival of atomic power in the United States will hang in limbo for the immediate future, but industry experts said Japan’s crisis isn’t likely to derail U.S. energy policy, which has been trending toward nuclear sources for the past decade.

Despite concerns raised by radiation leaks caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Atlanta-based Southern Co. said it does not expect delays as it tries to build what would be the nation’s first new nuclear power units started in a generation. President Barack Obama has renewed his support for loan guarantees designed to give Wall Street confidence in financing more nuclear plants. And some investment bankers already regard a recent sell-off of nuclear-based stocks as a good chance to buy.

Officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s policy arm, said they expected between four and eight new nuclear plants to be built nationwide by 2020 before the earthquake and tsunami slammed Japan — and they said this week that the forecast remains unchanged.

California has banned new nuclear power facilities since 1976 over concerns about long-term storage of spent fuel. A statewide poll last year showed building more nuclear plants continues to lack majority support, a stance that’s unlikely to change in the wake of Japan’s turmoil.

What’s virtually certain is that radioactive releases north of Tokyo will spark detailed reviews of disaster preparedness at the United States’ aging fleet of 104 nuclear reactors at 65 plants. One analysis projected that all but a handful of those facilities will reach the end of their lifetimes by 2050, forcing the nation to consider replacements in light of widespread demands to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and energy imports.

The toughest short-term questions already are hitting places such as the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station north of Oceanside because it’s just a few miles from a major earthquake fault. Those assessments will play into relicensing for San Onofre, where approvals are due for renewal by 2022, and other sites nationwide.

“People are going to say, ‘Is this the direction we want to be headed in, and if so, what are the policies, procedures and safety precautions that we need to make it work?’ ” said Scott Anders, director of the Energy Policy Initiatives Center at the University of San Diego.

Federal regulators are reviewing applications for about 20 new nuclear power plants, which can cost $5 billion or more, including the Southern Co.’s proposed reactors in Georgia. None of the permits under review are in California.

Obama has cheered the industry. “We’re going to have to build a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” he told a crowd in Maryland last month.

The vast majority of nuclear reactors — both existing and planned — are in the eastern half of the country, where quakes and tsunamis aren’t a top concern. Still, Japan’s crisis has stalled pronuclear measures in Indiana, North Carolina and elsewhere, while policy makers and residents are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Industry leaders and analysts said setbacks were temporary.

“Nuclear concerns appear to be overblown,” said a stock note issued this week by the global securities firm Jefferies & Co. “We believe there is minimal impact to the nuclear operators in the U.S. and any design changes implemented as a result of the incident in Japan will be minimal.”

Such predictions could change once more is known about the specific failures at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant north of Tokyo.

As of Friday, Japanese authorities ranked it as a 5 on a seven-point international scale for ranking nuclear incidents, making it similar to the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. That accident essentially put the domestic nuclear industry on ice for decades.

Problems in Japan “will slow things up, but it won’t kill it again,” said Eric Smith, assistant director of the Energy Institute at Tulane University, which is sponsored by power companies. “The reason is the situation is radically different from what it was 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, we could just build more coal plants.”

Current concerns about air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming mean coal plants aren’t nearly as politically palatable as they in the 1970s and 80s. Other alternatives face their own challenges.

The United States gets about 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, and it has by far the most nuclear generation of any country in the world. California is among the top 10 states in nuclear power production, and it gets about 13 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants.

In testimony before Congress this week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated Obama’s “bold but achievable goal” of generating 80 percent of America’s electricity from “clean sources” — including nuclear — by 2035. Nuclear energy is expected to grow but at a lower rate than overall energy generation.

Other energy options such as solar and hydro, along with concerns about plant safety and a focus on conservation, have limited the support for more nuclear power in California. In 1989, voters in Sacramento County became the first in the nation to shut down an operating nuclear plant — Rancho Seco — by a referendum.

Republicans in the state are much more likely to approve of nuclear power, while the majority of Democrats oppose new plants, according to a July 2010 survey of 2,502 residents by the Public Policy Institute of California. Overall, it showed 49 percent against new plants, 44 percent in favor and 7 percent undecided.

Murray Jennex, a veteran of the nuclear industry and a business professor at San Diego State University, said people with strong views on nuclear power probably won’t be swayed by recent events.

“The ones who will have to decide are the majority of people who are in the middle,” he said. “Four-dollar gasoline ... will force them to think about the ability to generate power without fossil fuels.”

The challenge of safely storing spent fuel continues to hamper nuclear sites, but the technology creates little air pollution, runs efficiently and offers a potentially large source of jobs.

Those factors make new nuclear plants acceptable even to some left-leaning groups such as Third Way, a think tank in Washington D.C. The long layoff since the last facilities were built and the fear of cost overruns mean government loan guarantees backed by Obama are needed to jump-start the industry, the group said.